Reuben Kaye – Plugged

Turn back the clocks – it’s Berlin in the 1930s … you can sense there should be cigarette smoke, and Kurt Weil, Bertolt Brecht and a young Jacques Brel sitting at the stage’s edge waiting for Marlene to appear. And she does…. tall, smokey-eyed, androgynously beautiful: but wait, this isn’t Dietrich, it can’t be; he sings too well and he isn’t butch enough. Yet the soul, the spirit, the charisma is all there, along with the ghosts of all the great Cabaret stars like Dietrich.

Now turn them forward to 2016 – and beyond – and wonder at the phenomenon that is Reuben Kaye, former Balwyn schoolboy and European Cabaret star.

There are many words you could use to describe Kaye – Camp, Kitsch, Subversive, Outrageous, Confronting, but they’re only part of the story. Last night he had the audience searching for superlatives – Outstanding, Unique, Gob-smacking (smacking a Gob might be an appropriate way of “Plugging” – as in the title) Phenomenal, Extraordinary….are you seeing a pattern here?

It’s not that Kaye does anything that hasn’t been done before – it’s just that he does it better, and with more style and class than we are used to seeing, especially in a comedy festival. Is he funny? – God, yes – especially as he tosses asides like “As the French would say…Quelle C$nt” under his breath with such aplomb that we feel we’ve been blessed with the soliloquy from Hamlet (and actually he includes a few lines of that). Listening to him explain to a punter in the audience the difference between Bernini and Panini (“One’s a great sculptor – the other is a sandwich”) – whilst looking for all the world like the former’s marble bust ‘Anima Dannata’ - is something which will stay with me forever.

Kaye has intelligence, and culture, and taste, and those things – rather than the high camp persona and costumes – will make him difficult for some people to relate to, even when he panders to the LCD with numbers like ‘Copacabana’ or ‘Land Down Under’. That’s okay – greatness and excellence aren’t immediately palatable to everyone. I was in my forties before I became enamoured of smoked salmon and escargots. Some will always prefer a burger and chips, but it’s worth reaching for excellence when it is within reach. His voice is rich and powerful, though a little pitchy last night in places; his sense of pathos is superb, as is his acting when he tells the story of an unrequited love at school. His sense of truth is palpable and you’ll be crying at one moment, and wetting your pants the next.

I am reminded of a young Reg Livermore in his Betty Blockbuster days – dazzlingly offensive yet mesmerising. Well, Reuben Kaye is Livermore on steroids and speed. He’s a Superstar by any definition. See him now, before he climbs the heights he is destined for and you can no longer afford to.

Coral Drouyn